How to Use AI-Generated Images for Book Covers

Last year I needed covers for about 40 books on Obooko within a few weeks. At $300-500 per cover from a freelance designer, that's $12,000-20,000. We don't have that kind of budget for covers. nobody in independent publishing does.

So we started using AI image generators. And honestly, the results have been surprisingly good.

Why AI for Book Covers?

A decent freelance book cover costs $200-500. More for something custom with original illustration. That's fine if you're publishing one book, but if you're running a community with hundreds of titles, it adds up impossibly fast.

AI image generators let you create professional-looking cover concepts in minutes. Not all of them are print-ready out of the box, but they're an incredible starting point. And increasingly, they're the final product too.

Which Generator to Use

For photorealistic covers: Google Gemini (Nano Banana) is excellent. It handles faces, landscapes, and realistic scenes well. The output needs the watermark removed (which our free tool handles) and potentially upscaling for print.

For stylised or artistic covers: Midjourney is the clear winner. If you want something that looks painted or illustrated, nothing else comes close.

For text-heavy concepts: ChatGPT's DALL-E is surprisingly good at rendering text within images, which is useful for getting a sense of how a title will look on a cover.

The Resolution Problem

Most AI generators output at around 1024×1024 pixels. For a standard paperback cover (6×9 inches at 300 DPI), you need roughly 1800×2700 pixels. That's well above what any generator gives you natively.

The solution is AI upscaling. After generating your cover concept, upscale it to print resolution. We built a $2 HD upscale option into our tool that takes your 1024×1024 image to 2048×2048 using Clarity AI, one of the best AI upscalers going.

For full print resolution, you may need to upscale further using Topaz's desktop app or similar. But 2048×2048 is a solid starting point for digital distribution and POD (print-on-demand).

Prompting Tips for Book Covers

1. Be specific about genre. "Dark fantasy book cover with a hooded figure overlooking a burning city" works much better than "fantasy book cover"
2. Mention the medium. "Oil painting style" or "digital illustration" or "photographic" guides the aesthetic
3. Leave space for text. Prompt for "negative space at the top" or "simple background in the upper third" so you have room for the title
4. Generate many, choose one. We usually generate 10-20 variants before finding a keeper
5. Don't fight the AI. If it keeps getting something wrong, change your approach rather than adding more constraints

The Watermark Problem (Solved)

If you're using Gemini, every image comes with that diamond watermark. For social media mockups and concept sharing, it's annoying. For an actual book cover, it's completely unacceptable.

Remove it here in about two seconds. Free. Browser-based. Done.

Our Workflow at Obooko

1. Generate 10-20 concepts in Gemini using specific genre prompts
2. Pick the best 2-3
3. Remove watermarks with our tool
4. Upscale to print resolution
5. Add title, author name, and tagline in Canva or Photoshop
6. Export and upload

Total time: about 30 minutes for a professional-looking cover. Total cost: $0-2 depending on whether you need the HD upscale.

If you're producing covers at scale for a print-on-demand business, check out our dedicated POD workflow guide with platform-specific requirements for Etsy, Redbubble, and Printify.